" "Connections" to terrorists does not justify invading another country, otherwise we should have invaded half the nations in the world by now, and certainly every nation in the middle east. Even Afghanistan got the option to turn over Ossama Bin Laden and we only attacked after they refused to do so.

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have more terrorist connections than Saddam did, and they are our allies. This document is no smoking gun, it's a pathetic excuse for a failed, and possibly criminal policy. We decided it was a good idea to invade Iraq, and then went out looking for reasons to do so. Period. "

You have to look at it from an overall threat to national security. Let's first start by making a list of countries who leaders have declared war on America. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia aren't on that list- nor is China. This doesn't mean none of these countries may behave in ways which are hostile to the US. And if we simply "went" by what a number of citizens of various countries said, we put need to put America on that list.
So, it's what countries that have leadership which has declared war against to US. And I'm not referring to such legal terms as in you need a majority of some Congress to vote for it, or the countries have gone to the UN and declared this. I mean that the leader says in public they are at war [over and over again].

Iraq isn't unique in this respect, but it gets put on the list.

Next, you might look at the world and look at what any instability is causing the region or could cause in terms of effect upon the US and ROW. One could get input from leaders in the region [which are allies] as to what is causing them concern. The "Palestinian problem" obviously, fits this as far as Arabs are concerned- no question about this. This "concern" has caused the US and ROW to try to solve this problem for decades- and not getting very much progress [or simply getting worse wouldn't be a assessment too far off]. Now, the Palestinian "leaders" are essentially terrorists and they have declared war and conducted terrorism against the US- though one couldn't really consider them a country [yet].
So, let's put the Palestine issue to the side, and ask what other Palestine is causing concern?
Well, having air bases in Saudi Arabia was mentioned by one terrorist in particular, but this not a non-issue for other "less" crazies- Bin Laden isn't particularly bright, but he can listen to complains and other crazies and feel the political pulse and of course capitalize on this.
Why do we have air bases in Saudi Arabia?
Well, they were put there because Saddam invaded Kuwait and threatened to invade other countries. And they remained because Saddam violated the cease fire agreement and continued to violate the cease fire agreement.
He appeared to have zero desire to move from a cease fire agreement to some peaceful condition- to get past the cease fire agreement. He obviously lost his war, but spend considerable time declaring himself victorious. His only solution was to continue the war- he couldn't end it without having something to show for the disaster he caused- so defeating the US in someway was the only thing he could do. His way of defeating the US was for the sanctions to "not work"- which essentially amounted putting billions of dollar in bank vault and letting the people of Iraq suffer economically. And fight a propaganda war, which can simply summarized by example of CNN agreeing not to write anything bad about him or his regime [write thing he approved of] in exchange for media assess.

Iraq before Saddam took over the leadership of the country was one of most prosperous countries in the region, and before the US invasion was poorer per captia than India- you have look for real shit holes to find something comparable- N Korea of course, was and is worse.

Nobody was really aware [including Iraqis] of how bad it was in Iraq- it wasn't "kids flying kites in Iraq" which was primarily the cause of this, but more of black out of any reports and people in Iraq might have been more worried or being maimed or murdered than the decay of economic conditions. But everyone knew that condition in Iraq weren't good- thousands of babies were being killed by the imperialist US policies, according to news accounts.